Published on November 3, 2022 by Ryan Galloway
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The Samford Novice Debate team won the Gonzaga University tournament hosted Oct. 29-30, with the teams of Ella Ford and Mary Grace Hammond, Libby Hutchinson and Praise Kelly-Williams, and Lucy Eubanks and Madison Hackett sharing the co-championship.
Ford won the second speaker at the tournament, Eubanks was third, Hackett was fourth, Hammond was the fifth speaker, Hutchinson was the eighth speaker, and Kelly-Williams was the tenth speaker. The novices defeated Monmouth University, Southwestern University, and the University of Indiana on their way to the championship.
“We’ve never had such dominance in a division in my seventeen years at the University,” said executive director of debate Ryan Galloway. “Our novice program is competing at an elite level,” he added.
The Samford varsity teams of Grace Blackwell and TJ Riggs and Aaron Gill and Joey Tarnowski also had their best tournament of the season, defeating Dartmouth, Northwestern, the University of Kentucky, and Missouri State University.
“While a lot of the focus of this tournament will be on the novice debaters, our program is really succeeding in every division,” said director of debate Lee Quinn.
The squad competes at Wake Forest University in two weeks to close out their fall semester.
Samford is a leading Christian university offering undergraduate programs grounded in the liberal arts with an array of nationally recognized graduate and professional schools. Founded in 1841, Samford is the 87th-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Samford enrolls 6,101 students from 45 states, Puerto Rico and 16 countries in its 10 academic schools: arts, arts and sciences, business, divinity, education, health professions, law, nursing, pharmacy and public health. Samford fields 17 athletic teams that compete in the tradition-rich Southern Conference and ranks 6th nationally for its Graduation Success Rate among all NCAA Division I schools.
